Your emotions are your most powerful messengers: How somatic therapy helps to connect with them
Every single emotion you feel is valid. Emotions arise so your body can process something, then it can free you of it. Curiously, compassionately validating emotions connects us to who we are deep down. Our thoughts can lie to us about that; emotions can’t. The body, unlike the thinking mind, always tells the truth.
So your emotions aren’t a burden, no matter how messy they may seem, or inconvenient they feel. At the same time, validating your own emotions doesn’t always have to mean fully expressing them outwardly. While it’s powerful to let out what we feel, we can acknowledge our emotions at any time, as we move through our day. Ignoring our emotions altogether, meanwhile, keeps us stuck.
It also isn’t wrong or shameful to feel disconnected from emotions. Sometimes our bodies stop us from feeling emotions, so they can naturally protect us from certain experiences until our nervous systems are resourced enough to process them. For that reason, coping mechanisms such as detachment and numbness serve a purpose, to a point. However, they also stop us feeling really alive and becoming who we know we can be; the fullest, most authentic version of ourselves.
So we have to be able to create capacity and safety in the body to let our emotions move through us, without feeling like it’s all too much. Without feeling dysregulated or traumatised. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it. It can be a gradual process of learning to listen to ourselves, getting comfortable with accepting whatever emotions arise. Sometimes we need someone to support us in that process, as we navigate what our bodies want to feel.
Take the definition of trauma, for example. It literally translates as ‘wound’. Trauma isn’t the event itself, but what happens inside of us. This wound is created as a result of what happened to us, in the absence of an empathetic witness (Peter Levine). Therefore, healing can’t happen in isolation, as trauma is created in a relational container.
We need someone to be that empathetic witness. Maybe it feels too scary or risky to revisit those messy parts of us alone, those points of pain that we haven’t felt resourced to revisit before. When we can unravel our deepest emotions, we can heal old wounds, break limiting patterns and form new beliefs. Ones that feel more productive, loving, and informed by truth, rather than fear.
Befriending your emotions is among the most important work you can ever do.
Hear how The Loud Quiet community related to their emotions after my breathwork classes, somatic therapy and events:
“It was quite unbelievably emotional and I feel something has been unlocked that hopefully won’t go back in its box.”
“I left feeling lighter every session and was finally able to release and shift some emotional energy that had felt ‘stuck’.”
“It was wonderful to find a place of safety within my body and to connect deeply with parts of me that have held pain in the past.”
“The session was not what I expected and it exceeded my expectations. My body and emotions reacted in ways I did not expect to release emotion.”
“The 1:1 work I did with Becky helped release emotional blockages…I was able to go into a deep/meditative state. It made me realise the power of healing through breathwork, and where I store emotions in my body. The work we have done has been incredibly profound and meaningful.”
“I ended up exploring some deep themes in a way that has continued to prove very fruitful.”
“Thank you again for holding such a safe space to allow me to feel and to be and feel safe enough to let go”
“The guided breathwork allowed me to achieve a state of emotional release and I left the session feeling clearer, calmer and more at peace with negative emotions.”
“It was really good to make time to connect to the breath and body and it helped me to release some emotion.”
Want to know more about how somatic work can help you connect with your emotions? Visit my somatic therapy page, or feel free to email me: hello@theloudquiet.co.uk.
